The author’s use of the recent murders of my fellow officers to justify his belief that taking one of our fundamental rights from us will somehow make us safer is insulting and illustrates his ignorance of the intentions of our founding fathers in the crafting of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Insulting in his characterization of the cold-blooded ambush inflicted on them and how their guns failed to protect them. Given the situation, there was nothing they could have done to change the outcome. The author also failed to state that one of the officers in the Lakewood incident did manage to return fire on the shooter and Tim Benton’s partner, Officer Britt Sweeney, also managed to return fire. Insulting in his failure to do them the honor of at least naming them in his pathetic rant. Their names were Sgt. Mark Renninger, Officers Tina Griswold, Gregory Richards, Ronnie Owens and Timothy Benton.

I have been a police officer for 27 years and so believe that I can speak with some authority on this subject. Our focus should be on the person, the individual, not the tool. We have laws in place now that prohibited the shooter from possessing a gun. Did those laws stop him? No, because those laws only work on law-abiding citizens. We call them criminals for a reason. More guns laws or taking guns away from law-abiding citizens will not make us safer. Strict enforcement of existing gun laws, stiffer penalties for gun crimes and the use of the death penalty will. It’s hard to reoffend when you’re dead.

Tim Personius

Buckley